CHANEL Commission: Lina Lapelytė. We Make Years Out of Hours

Lina Lapelytė's performance We Make Years Out of Hours transforms the Historic Hall of Hamburger Bahnhof into a space for collective action and singing as part of the second CHANEL Commission. The exhibition transcends boundaries between sculpture and performance, the individual and the collective: 400,000 wooden cubes spread across the floor, stack into piles, connect into architectural and then hill-like structures. The blocks move through the hands of performers and visitors, continuously reshaping the wooden landscape. We Make Years Out of Hours is a living monument to time, care, and coexistence. By actively involving the audience, the participatory format emphasises the concept of the open museum as the theme of Hamburger Bahnhof's 30th anniversary. The Historic Hall of Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart becomes a shifting landscape of 400,000 wooden cubes. 12 performers and visitors build temporary structures accompanied by sound. Voices fill the space with songs. The lyrics are based on poems by 15 international authors from the early 20th century to the present. Like the exhibition space itself, the work also becomes a place of constant change. The 10 x 10 x 10 cm cubes made of spruce and pine move through the hands of performers and visitors. Structures emerge and disappear. Each new form requires another to give way. The work raises questions about what remains and what passes away.